NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
October 3, 2003
In this news release:
- A 90-Ton Challenge: Double the Use of Fair Trade Coffee
- LWR's Gender and Development Expertise Featured at Capitol Hill Briefing
- You 'Allow Us to Dream' Overseas Partners Tell LWR Board
- See the"Luther" Film and Appreciate Reformer's Wider Legacy
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2800.
A 90-TON CHALLENGE: DOUBLE THE USE OF FAIR TRADE COFFEE
Baltimore, October 3, 2003 - October marks the start of a special fair trade drive in Lutheran parishes and households across the U.S. The goal is to double the use of fairly traded coffee here, doubling the resulting benefit that fair trade delivers to hard-pressed coffee farmers overseas.
The Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and Lutheran World Relief have begun "Pour Justice to the Brim: The 90-Ton Challenge," a year-long push to encourage more congregations and more church members to use coffee that is produced and priced to remedy basic inequities in the conventional coffee trade.
"In the seven years since the LWR Coffee Project was launched, more than 3,100 parishes have made a commitment to fair trade," said Brenda Meier, who manages the project for LWR. "At a time when the conventional market price for coffee is around 50 cents a pound, and fair trade coffee earns two-and-a-half times as much, $1.26 per pound, it's imperative for more and more parishes to help meet--or exceed--the 90-ton challenge."
Ways to reach 90 tons are featured in the October issue of Lutheran Woman Today, the magazine of the Women of the ELCA. Parishes are using fair trade cafes, fund-raisers, forums and fair trade gift baskets to successfully promote fair trade. Sales of fair trade coffee through the project jumped 64 percent last year -- to 45 tons.
LWR is offering two visits with coffee farmers in El Salvador and Nicaragua this winter. The coffee in the LWR Coffee Project comes from small farmers in Central America and other countries including Haiti, Indonesia and Tanzania. For information about the LWR Coffee Project and the 90-Ton Challenge, visit www.lwr.org/coffee.
LWR'S GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT EXPERTISE FEATURED AT CAPITOL HILL BRIEFINGBaltimore, October 3, 2003 - Lutheran World Relief President Kathryn Wolford joined an African ambassador and a World Bank specialist at a congressional briefing on "Gender Equality and Economic Growth" this week in Washington, D.C.
For LWR, increasing women's status and participation in society is not only the right thing to do, Wolford said, it is also the smart thing to do. She cited evidence from LWR and other programs indicating that family well being increases and poverty is reduced when women and girls have access to education, credit and land, and can use devices like wells and oil seed presses that reduce their heavy workloads. Wolford challenged policymakers to use available data to better anticipate the impact of trade policies and development programs, so that steps can be taken to maximize the actual benefits for women and children.Zambia's U.S. Ambassador Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika described how women deal with discrimination, chronic poverty and the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Despite these challenges, she noted that African women are providing strong and inspiring models of leadership in conflict resolution, in peace-making, in AIDS response and in positions of power in several southern African nations.Ambassador Mbikusita-Lewanika cautioned against the privatization of health, water and other services because that trend has made life more difficult for poor Africans in general, but especially for impoverished women.The briefing was convened by InterAction, a coalition of over 160 U.S. organizations working in international relief and development. LWR is a founding member of InterAction, and Wolford has served as chairperson of its board of directors. For an example of an LWR project addressing gender and development, see www.lwr.org/swa/projects/burkina.html.
YOU 'ALLOW US TO DREAM' OVERSEAS PARTNERS TELL LWR BOARDBaltimore, October 3, 2003 - LWR not only helps communities change society, it also changes the way they see themselves, representatives of two overseas partner organizations told the LWR board at its September meeting.
Yacouba Zeba and his organization, Dakupa, in Burkina Faso, West Africa, help start small businesses in 33 communities where almost everyone lives from subsistence farming and only 30 percent of all children -- and 17 percent of girls -- attend school. Village groups run micro-credit schemes, cereal banks and a yogurt co-op with support and training from Dakupa and LWR.
"LWR's emphasis on capacity strengthening for partner organizations has helped us with tools that enable us to look ourselves in the mirror," Zeba said. "We can identify weaknesses and are not ashamed. We also see lots of strengths, even some we did not realize before but know we can build on."Zeba said he asked a non-literate woman in one village what this 'capacity strengthening' meant to her. "'I am impressed that our village has not started anything yet,' she said, 'because now I am much more conscious of the kind of challenges that lie ahead of us. The process allows us to dream.'" The woman's dream is a dream that drives all people, Zeba said. It stands in sharp contrast to the poverty and, above all, the fatalism that prevails where he works, he said.In other business, the board reviewed LWR's current programs and strategies and received information on 37 new or newly extended projects. These are in 15 countries but mostly in India, the Philippines, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The board also approved a new budget for the 2004 fiscal year of $27.8 million, a three percent decrease from 2003.
Also reporting to the board was Julio Chavez, president of a long-time partner organization in Peru that specializes in agriculture and local development.
SEE THE "LUTHER" FILM AND APPRECIATE REFORMER'S WIDER LEGACY Baltimore, October 3, 2003 - Although the new Martin Luther film highlights Luther's struggles against the church of his day, the 16th century German reformer consistently scores high on lists of people who have shaped the modern world as well. During the "Luther" film's run in Baltimore, the three Lutheran service organizations headquartered here are letting their city know that that broader Luther legacy lives on.
"500 years ago Martin Luther changed the world," says a Baltimore Sun advertisement by Lutheran Services in America, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and Lutheran World Relief, and continues: "We're still at it today." Local affiliates of LSA and LIRS are invited to borrow the ad. A pop-up version also appears on the home page of our Web site.
Among the 95 theses that helped define Luther's place in history, a few link church reform and social service. Number 43, for example, says: "Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons."
